


compass always points north

by duelstance (valoirs)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: August Sheith Week, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-24
Updated: 2016-08-24
Packaged: 2018-08-10 18:11:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7855804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valoirs/pseuds/duelstance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Where were you,</i> Keith had asked, and Shiro hadn't known.</p><p>He'd been thrown a year off course, but even lost ships find, with enough luck, ways to guide themselves home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	compass always points north

**Author's Note:**

> A contribution for the August Sheith Week of 2016. It was initially intended for the "date" prompt but veered off track during the writing process. At this point, I want to say that if you _really_ squint, it might loosely fit under the following prompts as well: "pining," "nightmare," and "memories." And only loosely, at best. (If drawing vague inspiration from certain video games for fictional alien civilizations in this fic counts for the "crossover" prompt as well, that'd be neat, but I won't push my luck.)
> 
> My standard apologies apply. This is rather self-indulgent, so here's hoping I haven't veered completely off-field in terms of characterization and the like. Please enjoy!

 

Of all the things Shiro has had to anticipate going through in his life, kneeling before an alien monarch as she gently lowers a circlet of flowers to his head is just about the last thing he ever expected.

He can read the gesture for what it is: an honor, maybe, by this civilization's standards. They'd tailed a Galran patrol here, taking a minor detour to examine this strange planet caught in a curious limbo betwixt two others, mutual forces of near-equal gravity suspending it in place. The sun never sets here—so it goes, from what he picked out from the queen's soft burbling, her voice low like the crackle of flame. Shiro lifts his head just enough to watch the heavy set of the queen's arms settle back to her sides, flanked by her attendants. Hers are a curious people, bodies stout and vaguely heart-shaped and maybe three-fourths arms with large, calloused palms. Hands made for digging, gardening, anything but the crisis that would have ensued had Allura not shouted for all paladins to get to their lions and gun down the Galran ship before it razed the entirety of the lush landscape.

"Thank you," the queen says again, clearly one for few words.

Shiro straightens to his feet, surveys the five variations of mild disgust that Lance phases through in a matter of milliseconds in the background while sampling food from the feast, and manages a courteous smile for the queen's sake. "We're here to help," he reassures her again, watching the shift of her red, gem-like eyes from where they sit at the center of her stout body. "We're just relieved we made it in time. And if your people ever need any assistance in the future, you have the device Allura gifted you earlier."

"The bright one," burbles the queen with a gesture that Shiro can only tentatively place as a nod, because if anything, it looks more like a full-body bow. In a similar vein, he can only guess that the queen means Allura's hair. "We have gifts ourselves to bestow. Our fire flowers are most sacred. The purple ones may wield heat enough to destroy, but the real fires we know burn soft and long. Your ones may take fire flowers to your flying home as tokens of our gratitude for fighting off the purple ones. Especially the red one. The red one has gone missing."

Shiro blinks at the queen's palpable disappointment, and he looks up to see the celebrations unfolding around him. Hunk is nearby with Lance, sampling a beverage with a thoughtful intensity under Pidge's curious eye. Allura is mingling with a cluster of the strange rock-like people nearby, ever the diplomat, flanked by Coran. If her smile is just a bit strained as she witnesses a gardening demonstration where one of the queen's attendants chops a cluster of seeds into the ground, perfectly equidistant from each other, Shiro is content to feign ignorance.

Which really does leave just Keith, and…where is he, exactly?

"I'll find him," Shiro murmurs, worry already simmering low in his chest. There isn't any reason to believe Keith is in any actual danger. Shiro shouldn't be worried, but here he is anyway, turning on his heel, ready to search.

"Do not forget the fire flowers," the queen intones at his turned back, her voice severe, gesturing with a massive arm. "They are in the far field just beyond the hill."

Shiro manages half a nod before the circle of flowers on the crown of his head slides precariously and he has to reach up, fixing it. The petals are all bright orange, sitting awkwardly against the strands of his hair. As soon as he's far enough from the queen, he slides it off his head, grips it in the loose curl of his fingers while he makes his way to the crest of the hill.

If there's any one bright side to this planet, it's its lush similarity to the greener fields of earth. Massive fields of grass, blades fluttering idly in the passing wind. Even the scents here are similar, various nectars mingling to produce the sweet smell of fresh air and freshly turned earth. There's little to really dislike about a civilization that spends all its waking moments gardening, tending to the plants. It's one less planet under Zarkon's rule with this one saved, another point in the universe that need not be highlighted red for dead on the castle maps.

Imprisonment had snuffed out the best of his optimism, gouging deep, leaving little. Shiro can remember the worst of the nights, compartmentalizing the worst of what had happened, clutching at half-baked thoughts that the ferocity he displayed in the arena did not define him, the same way the cool metal of his foreign arm didn't. Here though, in the faint red light of the planet's perpetual dawn, warm colors washing over the landscape in a way that's heart-wrenchingly similar to sunrises on Earth, it's impossible not to feel some measure of tranquility.

And here, at the top of the hill, with a perfect vantage point for the endless field of flowers below, Shiro remembers: he set out to map the galaxy once upon a time, eyes bright and soul lit, even if it meant months on the same routine traveling to the edge of the known universe. This is one point in that same universe, previously unknown, another piece illuminated in the far-flung continuum of reality.

 _It's good to have you back,_ Keith had told him, that morning when Shiro had awakened for the first time in a year not to the clank of patrol armor but to soft, easy breaths, a gloved hand gripping Shiro's tight as its owner dozed at his bedside. Keith had followed him outside, and maybe earlier in his life Shiro would have called the look in his eyes lost, but he had known better by then.

Keith had smiled after a beat, sunlight washing over him, catching on the sweep of his bangs. The same way the light is streaming over the figure standing at the edge of the field below, dark hair streaked golden in the sun.

 _Where were you,_ Keith had asked, and Shiro hadn't known.

"Keith!" Shiro calls out, and he watches the figure turn at the sound of his voice, like a flower facing the sun. "Is this where you were?"

He closes the meters of distance between them, striding down to meet Keith at the bottom, where the tall blooms part around a simple dirt path that cuts through the fields. There's a faint frown at Keith's lips, something like exasperation lining the curve of his brow.

"Believe me when I say those guys seriously wouldn't leave me alone, okay," comes Keith's reply, and Keith meets Shiro's gaze head on. "I thought Lance was kidding earlier when he kept whining about these guys being obsessed with fire, and I hate to say this, but I think he was right."

Shiro's lips part around a chuckle. "You came here to get away from them then?"

"Hey, don't laugh. Those guys are insane. You'd think from the way they were following me around that they _want_ me to set them on fire with Red. I thought they'd be more cautious about  fire with all their flowers and crops, but it's like they've got some kind of fixation." Keith's gaze sharpens into a weak semblance of a glare, but it's halfhearted at best, lacking any bite.

"Well," Shiro says, squinting up at the sun, "the queen did say the sun never sets. Maybe that has something to do with it."

"Yeah, and when do they sleep then?"

"Never," Shiro replies solemnly.

A small grin forms on Keith's lips. "So what're you here for? How'd you know to come here?" Keith's looking up at him, brow raised.

Shiro can't help the sheepish smile that finds its way to his own mouth. "The queen offered what they call 'fire flowers' and pointed me in this direction. You weren't with the others, so I figured I'd start searching here first."

"She sent you here," Keith says, perfectly deadpan, gaze flitting to the flowers near them, "to pick some _flowers_."

"Yes. Yes, she did." Shiro pauses to gaze at the nearest fire flower, tracing the length of its massive stem to the cluster of golden petals at the head. If he didn't know any better, he'd say it's a sunflower. They stand taller than him, the flowers practically glittering in the light. Shiro glances between Keith and the nearest fire flower, observing the way it stands a full head taller than the other paladin. "Though I don't suppose she expects us to carry a bunch of these back to the ship," he finishes wryly.

"They're obsessed with fire like they're ready to throw themselves into it the way the Arusians almost did," Keith mutters under his breath. "You really think it would be a far stretch for their queen to go crazy over sharing _fire_ flowers?"

"I suppose not. She was looking for you earlier, actually, judging by the way she mentioned you."

"Don't tell them I came here," comes Keith's sour reply. "It took me way too long to shake off the first group that got to me. I'm not about to do that again."

"Last I saw, there was one clustered around your Lion examining it," Shiro points out. "So I don't know about that."

"Shiro, you're not serious."

It's valiantly that Shiro fights against the grin threatening to make its way on his face, but it wins out in the end. "Sorry, buddy, but I think I am."

"I'll just stay here. They'll never find me in this field, probably."

Shiro casts his gaze out to the field around them. "You really think so?"

There's a low hum in Keith's throat when Shiro's gaze alights back on the red paladin. The gap between them lessens, Keith taking another step closer, gloved fingers hooking around the flower crown in Shiro's hands. A small snicker escapes the pilot's lips as he balances it with his own hands, fingers hooked on two opposite sides of the circlet, before he stretches up, replacing it on Shiro's head. "Yup," he breathes, the words like a whisper, released on the exhale.

Time suspends there for a moment, a freeze-frame caught on the soft crinkling of the corners of Keith's eyes, the weight of the flower circlet settling once more on Shiro's head, the low laugh unfurling sweetly from Keith's throat. Shiro thinks back on Kerberos, the time before, the time leading up to it all—and then the now.

 _Where are you,_ Keith's voice asks him again, stronger than it should be in his memories, like it's set across the even cadence of a metronome, steadying under the furl of a crescendo. It doesn't crack this time, not like it did at first.

"Right here," he murmurs, and he reaches up and lets his fingers curl around the easy warmth of Keith's hand where it still lingers at the crown of his head after laying down the flower circlet. He holds it captive there, taking in the heat of it, the pulse beating imperceptibly under an expanse of leather. Shiro's still tracing out the universe even now, weaving patterns through entire star systems gone red in the three dimensional sprawl of Allura's maps.  He'd been thrown a year off course, but even lost ships find, with enough luck, ways to guide themselves home.

"Right here?" Keith echoes around a ribbon of full-body laughter. "Right here, you look ridiculous with this thing on, Shiro."

"Thanks, then, for putting it back on me," Shiro murmurs dryly. They've done little to address whatever this is between them, letting things come together again naturally as they always have. And he can't help it, he really can't, when he lowers Keith's captive hand just a bit and leans his own cheek into it, eyes going half-lidded, feeling warm leather and a trail of nails gliding feather-light over his skin as Keith's fingers twitch and curl gingerly.

Keith flushes slightly, something uncertain in his eyes, but Shiro can see the exact moment when he purses his lips and soldiers on. "I didn't say you look _bad_ ," he protests halfheartedly.

Shiro dips his head just a bit to press their foreheads together, clutching Keith's hand between them like a lifeline, the moment stretching intimately in the gaping realm of possibility around them.

It's silent now save the rustle of the fire flowers swaying idly around them, the plants so tall neither of them can see over the clusters of golden petals. If he stares long enough, there's a flicker in the glassy petals, like stained glass shards scattered in kaleidoscopic patterns reminiscent of daybreak, when orange bleeds into reds into yellows, much like the element whose name they bear.

Fire, like what Keith could be. A beacon for mooring ships, flames to light the path home. Framed by fire flowers and warm sunlight, Keith's silhouette cuts a striking sight against the backdrop. Shiro's seen plenty of stars in his lifetime, even more now that they have Voltron at their disposal and traverse the universe on technology far superior to anything back home, but what they never emphasize is this: that the stars at night are the self-same ones that light the sky during the day, that the force he's always been magnetically drawn to has just been the same all this time, constellations dotting paths in the sky for him to follow.

_And where's home?_

Right here, with the team, with everything that could have been left behind if Shiro were just a bit less lucky, if he hadn't had someone waiting for him, counting the days. _Some kind of arrival_ , Keith had called it, _and then you showed up._ It takes more than Shiro understands to keep a star anchored so long, waiting, staving off the inevitability of collapse with willpower and desperate determination alone.

And there were the sleepless nights Shiro had spent, wondering if he would ever go home again when all he came to know was the arena, the screaming spectators, the quiet agony of the prisoners around him. A nightmare given shape, etched fiercely in the planes of his skin where scars knitted together above bone and marrow, weaving its own pattern on the map of his flesh.

 _It's over_ , he tells himself, _because I'm_ here _now._

Keith reads him easily this time, the way he's come to decipher Shiro's body language like it's his native tongue, gaze smoothing over the line of Shiro's pursed lips. "You know," he says softly, finally, "sometimes I still can't believe you're here with us. I think sometimes I'll wake up and Voltron is just some dream and I'm still back there in the desert, and you're still out there, somewhere I can't reach. I spent so long trying to get better than you, beat every single high score you left in the simulator, every single mark you got in the piloting exams, and it still felt like no matter how far I reached, how far I chased, I wouldn't catch you."

"I'm here now," Shiro says, both for himself and for Keith, wondering who the words are meant to comfort more. "Right here. You've already caught up, Keith. Sometimes I'm the one wondering if you're the one who's out of reach now." He smiles, and it's a brittle little thing. "Outstripped me, maybe. I'm just—this." Reflexively, he clenches his fist, the one on his Galran prosthetic arm. "Damaged. Less than what I was."

The words catch up to Shiro when Keith pulls away, the warmth of the pilot's proximity receding. There's a frown at Keith's lips now, and Shiro feels his heart sink, pulse fluttering somewhere that could be his throat, words lodged there and refusing to emerge.

Keith reaches up, hooks a finger on the flower circlet again, dragging it slowly from Shiro's head with a soft rustle as stray strands catch briefly on the petals. Shiro's barely breathing as he watches Keith toy with the crown in his hands, eyes pensive.

"All right then, Shiro," Keith says, taking a single step back, the circlet in his careful grasp like a beacon, a symbol. "This? I'll give it back. You can finish the rest of what you were saying."

He turns on his heel, throws another look at Shiro over his shoulder, says, " _If_ you can catch me."

And he tears down the path winding through the field of fire flowers, fast enough to blur, a trail of petals from the circlet fluttering in his wake. The fastest of the entire group of them, like stardust in the prelude to something great, a star streaking on a collision course to full-fledged brilliance. Beckoning, leading the way.

Light to guide the way home.

Shiro's breath catches in his throat, and he sprints for it, rushing down the path faster than he's ever run before, the landscape around him spiraling into a panoramic motion blur. And _still_ it's not enough; Keith's form streaks far in the distance, disappearing around a bend of the path. Instinct leaves him breathless, rushing to hurry after Keith before he's really gone.

Keith's voice echoes out amidst the patter of their footsteps as they run, breathless, waiting: "Remember, Shiro! Patience—"

"—yields focus!" Shiro manages, and in the open maw of yawning potential around them, he can sense the anticipatory air, the pause, the interlude. So he clears out the desperation, schools together his calm, draws upon the best of everything he knows of himself. Shiro pours it all straight into the funnel of his mind, the immutable thirst for progress he's nurtured since he was young that led him straight to the Garrison doors, to Keith, to Voltron, to the path where he stands now.

It's never been one-sided, the push and pull of this gravitation, the meaning of really shooting for the stars.

He hears it right then, the sound of steps running parallel to his own, senses perfectly attuned, and he lurches through the wall of fire flowers on his side, plows right into Keith where he's in the adjacent path, catches the pilot by the middle and _does not let go_.  Keith lets out a yelp as he's reeled in and pulled right up against Shiro's chest, pinned close so he can't escape again.

They stop there, panting heavily, struggling for breath.

"So there," Keith says in the warm circle of Shiro's arms, chest heaving, back pressed flush to Shiro's front. "You caught me. Happy now?" He says the words without bite, voice low. Proud.

"Yeah," Shiro breathes. He can't see Keith's face, but the pilot's voice says it all. "Yeah, I am."

He buries his face in the nape of Keith's neck and presses his lips there, feeling the jump of Keith's skin against his mouth as the other paladin lets out a breathless laugh. Shiro can tell in the quake of Keith's body against his own—it isn't the fastest Keith has ever run, but it doesn't feel like a cheap victory in the least, and Shiro holds the thought close as he holds Keith even closer, breathing in the clean scent of the boy caught in his arms.

So this is what it's like to really be the one giving chase, searching, finding the shortest distance from point A to B, to be the one left waiting, anticipating. But this time he has the luxury of actionable plans, where taking the third option has always been a choice, _I choose both you and the universe_ ringing heavy in his thoughts, no brokering for anything less.

Real fires burn soft and long.

"You went easy on me, didn't you?" Shiro murmurs into Keith's skin, feeling a shiver in response, wondering if the thrill of chasing and being chased had sated something deep in both of them. If the quiet knowledge that Keith had gentled his speed just for Shiro could mean so much more than it did at surface glance. Shiro straightens but keeps one arm wrapped carefully around Keith's waist, then reaches with the other. Galran metal curls gently around the curve of the frayed flower circlet in Keith's grasp to pull it up onto the crown of Keith's head this time.

Shiro watches him reach up self-consciously to fix the circlet and twist around to face Shiro.

"What," Keith says, shrugging, his smile brighter than the sun, than the stars. "Where else am I gonna go, if not to where you are?"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> "It totally counts as a date if there were flowers and he _cradled you in his arms_ ," Lance says sagely, eyebrows waggling obscenely. "Am I right, or am I right?"
> 
> Keith stifles a groan into his hand. "Shut _up_ , Lance."


End file.
